Updating a previously published column:
Pinto beans are a Southern food, and Alfred Spencer of Seagrove, N.C., is the fellow who figured out how to put them into a can in 1950.
He and Ivey Luck opened Mountain View Canning Co. at Seagrove in rural Randolph County in 1947. Clay Presnell became a third partner in 1948. They started out canning beef and sausage products.
Chip Womick, a local journalist, learned that the men who gathered to play checkers at Ernest Spivey’s store in 1950 were pretty firm in their belief that “nobody can can a pinto bean fit to eat.”
Their wives, mothers and grandmothers knew the proper way to cook pinto beans was to soak them and slow cook them on simmer for hours in water seasoned with pork fatback and salt in a big old pot on the kitchen stove.
Spencer figured out how to make it work in a commercial kitchen. The company’s canned pinto beans were a hit. (Ivey Luck is shown below.)
Sales really took off when the partners changed the company name to Luck’s
Incorporated in 1953.
Spencer also came up with
the idea of bringing in Tommy Floyd and the Blue Ridge
Buddies, a popular country music band, to help promote Luck’s beans. The group
did a live show at Asheboro’s WGWR radio station. It was broadcast every
Saturday morning.
Soon, Tommy Floyd and his
band were plugging Luck’s products on television with country music spots
syndicated on stations throughout the Southeast. Here is the jingle: “Luck’s
pinto beans. Luck’s pinto beans. Eat ’em and you’ll never go wrong. Luck’s
pinto beans.”
“Tommy Floyd had a lot to do with Luck’s becoming a household name,” said Alfred Spencer’s son Bill Spencer.
“Luck’s beans served a
changing world,” Womick wrote in an article for Our State magazine.
“The economy was in need of heat-and-serve things,” said Lucy Rice, who went to work at Luck’s in 1954. “Women were starting to work. They could open a can and have a nutritious meal when they got home.”
Families could enjoy the
flavor of slow-cooked pinto beans without having to invest the time to prepare
them.
“Vance Williams drove a Luck’s company truck for 42 years. Once a month, every driver received a case of beans to dole out as he deemed necessary: to the men who monitored the vehicle weigh stations, to state troopers and to others,” Womick reported.
“Most orders were destined for store shelves within about a 500-mile radius. In the early days, the cans were sometimes still warm when they got to the stores. In all, Luck’s introduced more than 40 products through the years,” he added.
A brief message from Luck’s management team to its customers advised:
“Satisfy your Southern roots…we aren’t going back to basics. We’ve always been there. This is the South. This is Luck’s. Pull up a chair and grab a fork.”
In 1967, Luck’s merged with American Home Products. Then in 2000, Luck’s was acquired by ConAgra Foods. The company closed the Seagrove plant in 2002, moving production to Tennessee.
Lucy Rice said she “could taste the difference.” Luck’s beans packed in Seagrove used well water. They must have city water in Tennessee, she surmised.
In 2011, the Luck’s brand was purchased by Arizona Canning Company, which later merged with Minnesota-based Faribault Foods. In 2014, La Costeña acquired Faribault.
The old Luck’s canning factory
in Seagrove has been re-purposed as the Luck Comer Lail Center, a community
events venue, thanks to local philanthropist Jack C. Lail.
Here’s a bit of pinto
bean history and how to fix ‘em
Pinto beans are small, versatile legumes that have been growing in Mexico and Peru for more than 7,000 years and have always been a staple in the local diets.
Pinto translates from
Spanish to “speckled or painted,” referencing the reddish-brown spots on these
beige-colored beans.
Today, most pinto beans for commercial production are grown in northern Mexico and the southwestern parts of the United States.
Pinto beans are a nutritious part of almost any diet, due to the rich vitamin and mineral content of the beans. Each serving of pinto beans includes a potpourri of things that are good for you, and no sugar.
Pinto beans grow best in warm climates where they can enjoy at least 90 frost-free days and in an area that gets a minimum of six hours of full sun each day.
After 90 to 150 days, the pinto beans are ready for harvest. Pinto beans can be shelled and cooked fresh from the vine, but mostly, they are processed and canned or dried.
Before cooking dried
beans, it’s always a good idea to rinse them under cool running water. Most
people will simply soak their beans in a pot of water overnight in the
refrigerator. Drain the liquid and rinse the beans with clean water prior to
cooking.
If you’re trying to feed
a family of four and you’d like everyone to have the recommended ½ cup serving of
beans, you’ll want to cook one cup of dried pintos (which will make 2 cups
cooked).
To cook your pinto beans, cover them with water (approximately 2 cups of water for every cup of beans) and then bring them to a boil. Once they start to boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and continue to cook for 1 to 1½ hours.
While cooking, pinto bean
speckles dissolve and fade into a uniform, deep pink or brown color as the
starches hydrate and the pigment in the seed coat disperses.
There’s nothing better than pinto beans and onions, unless it’s pinto beans and onions…and cornbread.
“This is hands-down my
favorite food,” writes country music legend and actress Reba McEntire in her
new cookbook, “Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and
Dusting Off Your Boots.”
“I’ve loved pinto beans
and cornbread forever. And I still love them,” she said.
Reba’s recipe for pinto beans uses yellow onion, carrot, roughly chopped fried bacon, chicken stock, sherry vinegar, bay leaves and freshly ground black pepper; served with hot sauce.
No comments:
Post a Comment